Originally posted by josephw
Good positive stuff sonship. To bad divegeester still doesn't get it. He seems to think "predestination" means that some are chosen to be saved and others lost.
I'd like to examine that idea for a moment just to make my position clear about what predestination means, at least to me.
Predestination doesn't mean that God chose some to be saved and others ...[text shortened]... ve would receive judgment based on their works.
What do you think? Do you think I'm on to it?
Good positive stuff sonship. To bad divegeester still doesn't get it. He seems to think "predestination" means that some are chosen to be saved and others lost.
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Thanks for the encouragement.
My burden is more along the line of, say, the example of
Joseph.
That is a story of God causing all things to work together for good and for God's purpose.
You know that
Genesis 37 - 50 contains that story of the boy predestinated to reign as a king. He had the dream you know. The dream caused his brothers to hate him. The dream caused his brothers to be sold into slavery to the Egyptians.
God worked it all out. And the under divine providence all that his brothers did in reaction TO the dream just CAUSED the dream to be fulfilled!
What a fantastic matter is our God's transcendence over time and His sovereign predestination.
I'd like to examine that idea for a moment just to make my position clear about what predestination means, at least to me.
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Give it your best [brief] shot then.
Predestination doesn't mean that God chose some to be saved and others lost. The idea is that God knew who would believe and who wouldn't since before creation, and predestined that those that would believe would be made to be "in Christ", but those that chose not to believe would receive judgment based on their works.
I really find it hard to figure out. However, this part about being
"in Christ" is my emphasis too.
In Christ is in the whole realm in which God will produce sons for sonship.
In the sphere of Christ God will present the believers holy and without any foreign element.
You know in the fall of man a evil foreign element entered into our being - the nature of sin.
In Christ, that is
"in the Beloved" is a dimension in which every foreign particle is flushed out and God's life and nature are dispensed into man. He cannot fail to fulfill this "dream" either.
What do you think? Do you think I'm on to it?
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For about the last two or three years perhaps, I have come to the same kind of opinion. That is that God's foreknowledge is tied in to this matter of predestination.
But I would not be able to explain it completely.
In the meantime, just look at all the wonderful matters that come to pass
"in Him" as a Person we can enter into.
Christ is "enterable". That is the most important thing to me in this matter. He is a enterable Person who becomes a whole living realm in which God's eternal purpose is dynamically operating.
I think as you said mysteriously, divine foreknowledge and divine predestination somehow are working together.
What do you think of the story of
Joseph's words in the end of that story of God's predestination and foreknowledge ? He tells his brothers who are now afraid that Joseph will wreak revenge on them:
" And his brothers also went and fell down before him and said, We are here as your servants.
And Joseph said to them, Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God?
Even though you intended evil against me, God intended it for good, to do as it is this day, to preserve alive a numerous people." (Gen. 50:18-20)